Art and Culture
The role women and their influence in the twentieth century started when they were challenged, by men, not allowing women to be included in the art exhibits and therefore the feminist movement had begun. The feminist movement was started with four women artists: Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Carolee Schneemann, and Eva Hesse who participated in and prompted the artistic directions. The purpose of the feminist movement was to protest for equal rights, sexism, gender roles, and reproductive rights so women could be allowed in the American art world. In 1971, art historian Linda Nochlin published an essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” In this article she argued with art critics and historians. Nochlin explained how women were being excluded from all art exhibits and collections. Women started protesting by picketing museums and staging demonstrations. In 1972, women started shaping American society by opening their own art galleries all over the world to show their work. They opened feminist art programs at Fresno State College and California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in early 1970. By 1974 over 1,000 United States colleges and universities offered women’s studies courses. In 1975, women started creating images of their bodies to proclaim women’s right to control and enjoy their bodies, which was the start of women’s liberation, while other women decided to dress up their painting with embroidery, knitting, quilting, and china paintings to raise consciousness and redirect modern American art. In 1940’s, women started using initials or changing their names to reflect male gender names to overcome the invisibility and inferiority of women’s history and art. Many female artist started challenging male artists for dominance in the art world. The female artists made sure their paintings reflected history, spirituality, and power.
The role ethnic minorities and their influences in the arts of the twentieth century, in America, started with a Ralph Emerson novel The Invisible Man, (1952). In 1960, black American artist rejected their longstanding of being invisible. Black artists began organized protest against mainstream museums which ignored black art, to form their own collections, museums, and independent shows. Black Americans developed many different strategies for producing artwork that reflected the black life, experiences, and identity in modern America. In 1963, the first black arts group organized named Spiral. The black artists that created this group comprised of Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Norman Lewis, and 10 other New York artists. The group’s art still brought attention to the racial identity foreshadowing and socio-political directions that the Black Art movement made for the next decade. In 1967, The Studio Museum in Harlem was founded, becoming a national showcase of black artist with many other museums to follow. Native American and Chicano artists were also looking for cultural validation in modern America. In the 1960 and 1970’s for the American Indians artist faced racial scrutiny. Many American Indians were painted as loyal sidekicks, fierce warriors, and drunks. Native American modernists Oscar Howe, Allan Houser, and Joe Herrera forced museums, collectors, and other artists to rethink their point of view on Native American art. Yolanda Lopez, Judith Baca, Rubert Garcia, Carmen Lomas Garza, Luis Jimenez, and Amalia Mesa-Bains changed the demeaning stereotypes of Mexican Americans, by proving that Mexican Americans were not indolent, criminal, dirty, or sexy senoritas. Mexican Americans proved themselves by showing their multicultural roots and traditions in their art.
Art has influenced culture not only by paintings or sculptures, but by music, theater, and photography. Art reflects culture when a painter creates a masterpiece of his or her surroundings and emotions. This artwork shows to the rest of the world that society, politics, and environment to which the artist came from. Theater and music motivate and allow the artist to express themselves without a brush but by song or movement. Plays or a concerts would allow people to still feel the emotion, meaning, and story that the actor, actress, or singer is attempting to express. “Photography was used as an instrument for social reform to show how bad the Great Depression had affected the working class and the poor. These photographs showed the men, women, and children searching for jobs, shelter, and food. They showed a crowded park bench with upper and lower class homeless and in poverty waiting for the Great Depression to end, and the conditions of the farmers that worked the farmland and the tents and huts they had to live in to provide shelter. These photographs were taken to the Government to show them what was going on with the poor and out of work to try and get them help with the programs the Government had set up. Alexandre Hogue, Erosions No.2: Earth Mother Laid Bare, 1936, photograph that makes the most powerful social commentary because it shows the farm land as a desert oasis, the crops non-existent, and the homes abandoned because the farmers needed to search for food and work for their families.”
Culture draws the artist in and inspires and motivates them to paint or sculpt. It fills the artist with a possession and emotion to show the world what they see and the emotion they are feeling. The artists takes in the scenery around them and their everyday lives and painting it on a canvas or creating a sculpture. It started with paintings of big business, such as smoke stacks from factories; paintings of how the poor side of town lived by using visuals of the market place, and alley ways; paintings and commercials of household items such as Campbell soup, and vacuum cleaners; women expressing that a naked body is beautiful and women are in control; Native Americans and Mexican Americans turned the views of stereotypes by showing creating paintings of their traditions and roots to help educate individuals on their way of life.

Reference
Benny, D. (2015). Photography and Social Reform. Unpublished manuscript.
Doss, E. (2002, April). Oxford History of Art: Twentieth-Century American Art. Cary, NC, USA: OUP Oxford. Retrieved from ebrary, 289